Coming from a background of retail and food service jobs, Radial Development Group’s hiring process was strange to me. I first reached out to Radial while I was partway through my software development bootcamp curriculum with Bloc. Part of Bloc’s selling point was that they would not only teach you to code in high-demand programming languages like Ruby and JavaScript, but that they would also help you enter the job market. As such, they encouraged me to reach out to people in the development community near me, apply for jobs, and start working to get my foot in the door.

At the time, I did not hear back from Radial, possibly because they wouldn’t have had a clue who I was, and possibly because I’m pretty sure the company’s management structure was changing significantly around that time and there’s a good chance my resume was lost in the shuffle. Regardless, I got no response.

But the opportunity seemed too good to pass up. Radial wrote web applications in the same programming languages I was learning, so I felt I would be able to offer them relatively good value as junior developers go. Plus, they were located in Loveland, Colorado, which was a perfect geographic fit for me.

So I applied again when I was closer to the end of Bloc’s curriculum, sending a resume to the owner, co-founder, and manager of the company, Ben West. This time, I got a reply, and we met up and discussed how the company operated and if they were currently hiring.

(A quick note for anyone who really wants a specific job and didn’t get it the first time: apply again. I did this at Simply Mac, T-Mobile, and Radial, and there’s something about the second application that seems to show employers you’re worth taking a chance on, even if your resume doesn’t quite check all of the boxes.)

I got a strange answer about the company’s hiring status. There was a direct “No,” they were not hiring, but also an upfront statement of how much I would be paid in such a position and an offer to let me code at the Radial offices while I continued working through Bloc. I expressed interest in the position and that was the end of it.

I figured I might hear back if an opening came up, but for the time being, I kept searching. I went to a Boulder Ruby Group Meetup where Kate Catlin, founder of Find My Flock, was looking for support in contributing to an open-source project, Women Rising. Bloc’s curriculum asked for me to make ten open-source project contributions, so I jumped on the opportunity to contribute to a Rails project that had been started in Colorado.

As it happened, Ben was a friend of Kate’s, so I wound up chatting with him again over Slack. Now look, I’m not a destiny/fate/“it was meant to be and the stars aligned” type of guy, but it seemed like Ben and Radial kept cropping up everywhere I went. Kate told me at the Meetup how great Radial had been in supporting Women Rising, and that told me that it was really worth pushing harder to land a job there.

Long story short, I wound up working on Women Rising at the Radial offices—there was some strange issue where the form for one model needed to accept data for another model, and it was not really set up to do so. The solution involved an `accepts_nested_attributes_for` or two, at least one `f.collection_select`, and a lot of confusion on my part.

In short, I learned pretty quickly by pairing on the project with Rebecca Klein and Ben that my experience at Bloc was little more than a taste of what it was like to work on a live codebase with real users. Fortunately though, the Radial team was patient with me, supportive of my efforts, and open to my likely-stupid questions.

I ultimately delivered the contribution in the form of a sizable PR, which my Bloc mentor graciously counted as several open-source contributions rather than one. But more important than contributing to the code, truthfully, was the fact that it had given me the opportunity to work with the Radial team. I had met with Ben several Thursday mornings at a local coffeeshop, Dark Heart, and we had shared a lot of background about ourselves. We had both worked a lot of jobs full of thankless work and nearly-thankless pay; we were both critical of the gig economy as an underhanded way to get out of actually taking care of employees; and we both faced immense struggle with student loan debt that made the process of entering adulthood feel like it was a race run with ankle weights.

While I certainly know Ben and the Radial team much better now than I did then, these things all gave me examples of the Radial company culture. When Ben eventually offered me a job interview, I had a sneaking suspicion that the decision was more or less made before the interview began—if he didn’t like me working at Radial, I suspect he would have told me to leave before he started paying me.

Bloc had warned me about the possibility of technical interviews in the hiring process, where I would need to write a FizzBuzz function on a whiteboard or some such thing. Fortunately, my interview at Radial contained nothing of the sort, possibly because Ben himself was a developer and knew that FizzBuzz is worthless as a measuring stick of a software developer. I had only vaguely begun to understand this at the time, but now I can see with some certainty that every software project is specialized. Every project has particular needs that led to particular choices in the codebase that make it complex in a unique way, and no amount of industry experience can prepare you for it completely.

Instead, I got the sense that Ben wanted to know how I would lead a project, how I operated as an employee, and what I would do when handed hundreds of problems with no clear solution (incidentally, I think a lot of companies of all sorts could learn from this strategy). As I would later learn, the job I was hired for, Developer Lead, was not clearly structured; the projects I would work on had processes for development and deployment, but only in a vague sense that didn’t encapsulate their specific needs; and in general, the downside of the freedom and authority that comes from working at a small company is that there aren’t really any concrete guidelines for a lot of things. Ultimately, the job I was being offered was one that I would be making up myself.

The interview is now something of a blur to me. I always feel a lot of pressure in job interviews, no matter what the manager interviewing me does, and so I tend to forget what happened in them when they’re over. But I attempted to allude to the main thing I had learned from the dozen or so jobs I had held prior to working at Radial: school teaches kids to work exactly the opposite way from how the workforce works. In school, you are given tests, and the goal of a test is to avoid being wrong.

In work, there’s typically no way to study in advance, so the goal is not to avoid being wrong, but instead to be wrong now, to fail fast. Then you can figure out why you’re wrong and go solve the problem before it becomes your client’s problem. Super Target didn’t show cashiers any documentation on how to add a transaction to a gift registry or process a tax exemption; Old Chicago didn’t tell dough cooks they should mix their artisan dough first so it can proof while the cook is sheeting the cornmeal dough; Simply Mac’s training courses didn’t teach me how to check for liquid damage in an iPhone; and even two weeks of training at T-Mobile didn’t cover how to process Early Termination Fee reimbursements as opposed to Equipment Installment Plan Reimbursements. But I learned all of those things by asking questions and being wrong as soon as possible.

I think this is ultimately what landed me the job, whether Ben knew it before I said any of it or not, and I will always be tremendously grateful that Radial was willing to give me my first job as a software developer because of it.

It’s hard to believe we’re already at the end of 2018—almost three and a half years since Aarica and I met, and almost two years since I asked her to marry me. But we’re here, and only eight months away from our wedding date.

We couldn’t be more excited for what next year holds (Aarica especially, since she’s getting her braces off shortly, which will mean it’s time for us to get our engagement photos and invites rolling), but for now I’m going to talk about what we’ve been up to since our last Christmas letter.

2018 started off busy and stayed that way. At the very end of 2017, I landed a part-time position as a Software Developer at Radial Development Group, which I worked in conjunction with my full-time position as a Mobile Expert (a glorified Sales Associate) to more effectively pay rent. I was hired on in a sort-of-like-contract-to-hire role as a Lead Developer on one of the many projects our small team was coordinating. Meanwhile, Aarica worked her semester as a student teacher at High Plains School in Loveland. She worked with fifth graders for the first half of the semester, then transitioned to working with the second graders for the latter half.

Emmett did not work.

Neither did the latest addition to the household, Leo, my sister Meghan’s new cat. Emmett sees him as his annoying little brother. I see a giant butt on our table.

But we certainly felt like sleeping along with him after our long work hours. So what did we do?

Go to DisneyWorld, of course!

Animal Kingdom was, well, a zoo. But the Avatar ride and Lion King show were pretty fun!

Aarica had never been to a Disney park, so we thought it was important to see as much as we possibly could.

Cinderella’s Castle. And people scared of rain.

Random visitor names are displayed on the walls on your way into Rock ‘n Rollercoaster in Hollywood Studios. Aarica’s was picked, which made her very excited—her name’s spelling isn’t about to appear on a Coke bottle, after all.

Hollywood Studios is packed to the gills with Star Wars paraphernalia these days. Can’t imagine why.

Epcot was as fun and fascinating as I remembered.

Yes, DisneyWorld is in Florida. Yes, Aarica was cold anyway.

Sooooo we got her coffee.

Ha, look at Aarica’s face on Rock ‘n Rollercoaster!

…Well, touche. I guess I find Space Mountain stars cool?

In short, we had a blast.

But then it was back to work. The High Plains/Radial/T-Mobile shuffle continued until the summer, but we found time to see one of our favorite bands again, The Fratellis.

And got to see Vance Joy at Red Rocks and Blue October at the Ogden.

Vance Joy made a live album of the Red Rocks show!

The summer brought some big changes. Aarica finished her student teaching and dived right into her final classes for her Master’s Degree in Elementary Education, while also picking up a nannying job and applying to about every teaching job she could find to jump right into her new career in the fall.

Meanwhile, I officially closed the door on my life in food and retail, quitting T-Mobile and taking on a full-time position as a Lead Developer at Radial.

Ihaveshakyhandsdon’tjudgeme

Since we haven’t been to enough weddings prior to our own, we went to yet another in June. This one was for Jen, Aarica’s former boss and friend from ABC Child Development Center in Greeley, and her new husband, Britton.

Aarica was a bridesmaid.

The venue was at the top of a mountain that we took a ski lift to get to. It was quite an experience!

Shortly before the school year started, Aarica officially earned her Master’s Degree and landed her first full-time teaching job as a fourth grade teacher at Shawsheen Elementary in Greeley. Here’s her eating ice cream in celebration.

She probably would’ve gone to get ice cream anyway. She rather likes the stuff.

In September, we squeezed one more concert in. After Vance Joy, I felt it was important that we see some badass punk rock in the form of Rise Against at Red Rocks.

And that I rep Radial while I was at it, clearly. But wow it was an incredible show!

We went to lots of great movies this year, as always: Incredibles 2 for our traditional anniversary date; Christopher Robin because of course we saw Christopher Robin (it was quite heartwarming, actually); the utterly-outstanding movies-directed-by-actors, A Star is Born and A Quiet Place; the most underrated movie of the year, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald; the latest in a movie series that has no right to be getting better, but is doing so anyway (Mission Impossible: Fallout); and, of course, the latest Marvel superhero outings (Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Deadpool 2).

Also, we saw disappointment in film form (Solo: A Star Wars Story), but I guess we should’ve seen that coming based on Ron Howard’s recent track record. It was a bit like drinking La Croix.

But we also did a couple of things a bit out of our comfort zone. Like go to a Halloween… festival, I guess you’d call it? There was one in Denver called Pumpkin Nights that we had a lot of fun at with our friends Charlie and Megan Stoddard.

You know you’re old when you have couple friends?

Aarica was there for the owls though, really.

Unfortunately, not all of 2018 was fun, or even positive. We had a great year, albeit a busy and occasionally-stressful one, but our families met with difficult challenges and heartbreak. Aarica’s grandma was hospitalized and had to get surgery; her sister, Karrisa, has been seeing a speech therapist all year after a car accident she was in over a year ago; my family’s labradoodle, Ellie, died at fourteen years old; my sister Caitlin’s fiancé, Lonnie, broke up with her (after proposing to her in the first place, no less), which led to us road-tripping her back to Colorado from New Orleans; and my grandma, Deanna Rice, passed away in October. We flew out to Maryland for her funeral, where I had the opportunity to speak along with my dad and grandpa about what a wonderful example she was to the people around her.

Fortunately, our families came together to support each other in a fashion that deeply moved me. It’s always hard to watch people you care about go through great adversity, but some small part of me welcomes tragedy for the way it brings out the best in people. We habitually joke around until we hurt someone, fail to take serious things seriously, “troll” people to get a rise out of them, criticize creators more than we create things ourselves, and get outraged (or feign outrage) over trivialities rather than daring to let our inner selves show.

But when tragedy strikes, people’s true natures show. We stop talking about the odd little quirks that sometimes drive us crazy about the people we love, and we start talking about how much they really cared about us, and we them.

And in any case, there were also some big successes that came from this year for the people around us. Aarica’s younger sister, Karrisa, has nailed down a career path she wants to pursue that she hopes to dig into when she moves to Alabama when their parents return from Japan. Their younger brother, TJ, joined the junior ROTC while going to school at the US Naval Base in Yokosuka. My sister, Caitlin (the middle child of us three), got a job at Mary Blair Elementary School as a Special Education Paraprofessional, got accepted into at least one Neuroscience Master’s Program (with several more applications pending), and got a new boyfriend named Ty who likes Harry Potter and is therefore cooler than Lonnie. My youngest sister, Meghan, graduated from high school, jumped right into the workforce at the local Culver’s (not to mention the world of paying rent), and snatched an internship at Radial out from under the noses of several college students.

And I’m thrilled that there’s so, so much more in store for us all. For our part, Aarica and I are aggressively paying down student loan debt and hope to have it paid off in the next few years; I’m working on a job-experience-sharing social platform called Novum Opus, which I hope to release version 1.0 of next year; and of course, we’re getting married on August 3, 2019.

She’s thrilled, if her constant Pinterest research is anything to go by. I’m thrilled, because I get to marry the most amazing woman I’ve ever met. And we can’t wait to see you all there.

I hope you enjoy the new content (well, most of it is old, but you get the idea). The Collegian required me to write extremely short articles most of the time, so you'll probably find some of them rather insubstantial, but I can also be more verbose than I need to be sometimes, so maybe it's a positive thing.

Post number 51.

UPDATE: The Columns Section no longer exists. Use the dropdown of blog tags instead.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year to everyone! 2017 was a big year for Aarica and I (and Emmett too, of course). We worked hard to develop our relationship, our education, and our careers, made some big steps in each of these areas, and built on some of the goals we set out for ourselves in 2016.

Or rather, Aarica and I did those things–Emmett played with hair ties, chased mice (computer mice, that is, not real mice), and meowed a lot.

I did not write a Christmas letter at the end of last year, but I did write a blog post about some of the biggest things that happened to our new family. Last year, Aarica and I celebrated our one year anniversary since we met; Aarica received her Bachelor's Degree in English from the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, was promoted to the position of Site Director at ABC Child Development Center, and picked up a job at Butters Daytime Eatery; and I started studying Ruby and JavaScript software development at an online coding bootcamp called Bloc, was promoted to full-time as a Retail Sales Associate at T-Mobile, and picked up work as an intern at the Colorado State Senate and as a driver for Lyft.

Most importantly, though, Aarica's parents gave me permission to ask Aarica to marry me, and she said yes on New Year's Eve!

So this year, we built on these things. Over the summer, Aarica began working on her Master's Degree in Elementary Education at UNC and finished her practicum observing other teachers in Greeley's school district. This means that she will be student teaching at High Plains School in Loveland next semester, have her Master’s Degree this summer, and start teaching next fall! She has continued to work at ABC throughout the year and worked part time at Portrait Innovations and American Eagle on weekends.

I am in the final weeks of my Bloc Software Developer Bootcamp. When I submit my open-source project, I will officially be done with the course at the end of this year! I continued to work at T-Mobile throughout 2017, where my title was changed to “Mobile Expert,” and did some Lyft driving on the side. Fortunately, all the coding at Bloc has paid off–just a couple of weeks ago, I was hired as a part time Software Developer at Radial Development Group in Loveland, a consultancy that works with small businesses to build and maintain websites and apps. Radial is a great, supportive team and I have loved working there so far!

Aarica and I have really enjoyed this first year of our engagement, and now two and a half years of our relationship. We moved in together in an apartment in Loveland earlier this year, and wisely chose one with a spare bedroom that has since become my sister Meghan’s room. It really feels like home now, even to Emmett, who was terrified when we moved him here.

Over the summer, Aarica got the opportunity to go to Japan to visit her parents and brother, who are living there for her dad’s work promotion, and came back very tired from jet lag but with a new appreciation for ramen that we are still trying to satisfy. Right around that time, I hiked Grey Rock, puzzled out an escape room, ate ice cream, and played Mario Kart with Nathan, Ryan, Trevor, and Mr. Liston for Nathan’s bachelor party. We took two separate wedding road trips this summer–one to Iowa for Nathan and Kat Liston’s wedding (I was best man!), and one to Jacob and Meagan Walker’s wedding. We hope everyone won’t be all wedding-ed out by the time ours rolls around!

Speaking of which, we picked our wedding venue: Wedgewood Tapestry House in Laporte, Colorado! We can't wait for that day–so much so that Aarica seems strangely excited when we simplify things and refer to ourselves as "Dan and Aarica Rice" on something mundane like the internet bill.

Those are all the big things, I think, but there are also lots of little things. Aarica and I stuck to our tradition of seeing the latest Pixar movies each summer and fall, which means we managed to stomach Cars 3 and tried not to cry like babies at the end of the masterpiece that is Coco. We also decided to start adding Pixar ornaments to our new Christmas tree every year, beginning with the movie we saw on our first date, Inside Out.

Just to make sure that no one doubted our nerdiness, we kept up with all the latest Avengers and Star Wars movies, played lots of Mario together, binge-watched several Netflix shows, and explored Zelda: Breath of the Wild for untold hours.

We watched all of the Northern Colorado fireworks from Horsetooth for a second year in a row together, got a beautiful Fracture print of a picture taken of us at Nathan and Kat’s wedding, and I did my duty as a fiancé to keep Aarica happy–which mainly means keeping her warm via blanket or fireplace and getting her lots of pancakes, chicken wings, and ice cream. I have so far avoided burning down the apartment each time I have made pumpkin pancakes, which, I’ve just realized, is one of the bigger accomplishments in this letter after all. I’ve gotten to be spoiled by Aarica’s fantastic mustard pork and beef stroganoff recipes all year, so fortunately my attempts at pumpkin pancake production remain few and far between.

And I get Aarica flowers every month at the anniversary of the day we met, because boy am I lucky to have her.

We learned a lot. We worked hard. And we had a lot of fun. We love all of our family and friends and wish everyone a happy and safe holiday!

I'm going to take a short break from blogging about coding and writing today. Instead, I want to talk a bit about video games, both for people who like them and for people who don't (and eventually get to the topic of the latest Zelda game).

I first played a video game when I was about seven years old. Some of the other neighborhood kids I knew had Game Boy Colors (this was the late 1990's), which introduced me to the existence of these devices that could play pretty complex games on little cartridges you could buy from your local retail store. As it turned out, my dad already owned a Game Boy (the original, big gray brick variety), which he had used to kill time, apparently, while serving in the Gulf War. He had Super Mario Land, Wheel of Fortune, Tetris, and Double Dragon for me to try out when I caught sight of it tucked away in his desk drawer, so for the steep price of $0, I got in on this new world of video games.

Back in my day, young whippersnappers, the gaming screens were black and green!

Since Game Boy was the first gaming device I could ever call my own, and I liked it a lot, I was naturally inclined toward Nintendo games (this is often how I make decisions: if I get a company's product and like it, I keep buying from that company in future; if I get a product and don't like it, I don't buy from that company again. Hasn't led me wrong yet). One thing led to another, and I became a fan of game series like Pokemon, Mario, Metroid, Super Smash Bros., and my very favorite, The Legend of Zelda.

I've owned some PlayStations, mainly to play Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, Infamous, Uncharted, and Metal Gear Solid. I've played some Xbox games with friends. But to this day, I always feel like I have more fun with Nintendo games, the very best of which, in my opinion, seem to have the most polished and immersive gameplay in the world. They're often light on story, but in video games, a simple, mostly-visual story is often the most effective kind.

The Super Mario Galaxy games told a compelling story in very few words.

I sometimes convince myself that I'm going to outgrow video games, probably because old people like to tell young people that video games are for children and I sometimes take that advice (almost) to heart. It's resulted in me making some stupid decisions, like selling my game consoles that I end up wanting back later.

But here's the deal: I don't think video games, as a mode of entertainment, are "for" any one particular age or "just for kids" any more than Disney movies are "just for kids" or literary books are "just for old people." Yes, childish people yelling at their Call of Duty game gives video gaming as a whole a bad name. But then again, one could argue that reading trashy romance novels gives reading a bad name, or watching Transformers gives watching film a bad name. And yes, there are many examples of people who are too addicted to video games for their own good. But again, this phenomenon is not exclusive to video games; Netflix binge-watchers (and the very fact that you know what that is) are a prime example of how people can get addicted to all sorts of entertainment forms.

This is a stereotype, but like all stereotypes, they have to come from somewhere.

The difference is that video games are still a very new medium (home consoles have only existed for 30-40 years or so, and if that doesn't sound young, think about what films were like 30-40 years into their existence). This presents two problems: one on the part of the consumer and their misconceptions, and one on the part of the industry and how it presents itself. The issue underneath the two is that both problems must change to make video games appeal to everyone.

Because video games are new media, old people don't understand it, don't care to try to understand it, and therefore don't like it, the inverse of young people. Social media, rock music, rap music, home television, and movie theaters have all followed similar trajectories. New media often pushes boundaries because artists like pushing boundaries, but whether it's goofy Snapchat filters, Grand Theft Auto telling a story that's some hybrid of Breaking Bad,The Godfather, and Scarface through a video game you control, AC/DC singing about sex, or Elvis hip-thrusting on TV, the problem is not that the new media will "corrupt our youth"; the problem is that people think it's corrupting the youth.

On the flip side, the video game industry (particularly when it comes to home console makers as opposed to mobile/handheld devices) has had the most success selling to males in their teens and twenties, so it continues to present itself as a form of entertainment designed for that niche. There are probably a dozen first-person-shooters or more released every year, most of which are sequels because those are safer to make, the same way that every movie gets a sequel now whether it's good or not, like Man of Steel. And as long as the industry thinks that that's the most important market to sell to, the perception will persist.

The good news is that there have been huge strides forward in this area recently. Nintendo is often a pioneer in this area, for example; games like Animal Crossing, Nintendogs, and Wii Sports do anything but cater to the stereotypical young male gamer. Even their two most popular shooting-based game series buck the violently-kill-everyone-you-see trends found in Call of Duty, Halo, Killzone, Resistance, and Gears of War, one by being bright and colorful and family-friendly (Splatoon), the other by focusing on single-player exploration, building a compelling atmosphere, and fighting hordes of monsters rather than other people (Metroid Prime).

Metroid Prime is all about exploration and atmosphere, not about how many kills you can rack up online. Better yet, you can get all three games in the Metroid Prime Trilogy, with revamped Wii motion controls, for $20 (not per game, total) on the Wii U eShop.

The other big shift in the industry, of course, is mobile gaming on phones and tablets. "Hardcore" gamers, as they call themselves, are often condescending about this area of the market, because it offers an "inferior" (re: different) experience from the gaming experience found on a home console. But between pick-up-and-play titles like Angry Birds, Pokemon Go, Super Mario Run, Words With Friends, and Jetpack Joyride, story-focused games like Old Man's Journey and Broken Age, and more intensive games like Clash of Clans, Infinity Blade, The World Ends With You, and Fire Emblem, it's clear that while mobile games must be controlled differently than console games to be effective, they are by no means a niche.

So what does all this have to do with my love of The Legend of Zelda and the latest title in the series, Breath of the Wild?

Breath of the Wild is f***ing awesome, that's what.

My theory is that more people would enjoy and appreciate video games for their puzzle-solving, the skill required to master many of them, and, believe it or not, the cost per hour of entertainment they offer (relative to going to the movies or paying for cable) if they were 1. eased into the complexity of how the controls work in modern games, and 2. experienced more games that were not designed solely for young men. Nintendo attempted this with Wii Sports, and was hugely successful, at least when it came to actually selling the console (they sold over 100 million units, making the Wii Nintendo's bestselling home console ever). The problem is that they failed to bridge the gap between Wii Sports players and the more experienced gamers who got a Wii for Zelda and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, meaning many people who bought the Wii didn't actually buy any games for it since Wii Sports came in the box.

Of course, Wii Sports is roughly as simple to play as your average mobile game. You tell the game you're actually throwing a bowling ball or swinging a golf club with a button or two, but otherwise the controls are based entirely on gestures. Mobile games, similarly, rely exclusively on swipes, taps, and presses to be controlled.

So how do you transition from there to the more complex games? In the case of Nintendo games, I think the solution lies in the past, and the mobile games I mentioned before.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, to a longtime fan, a hardcore gamer, or both, is an absolute masterpiece of a game in every sense. Don't let the people complaining that they don't own a Wii U or a Nintendo Switch distract you (because game consoles are generally a better value after a few years of building up their library, I have the Wii U version and don't yet own a Switch). Don't let people who haven't played the game deter you by pointing out that every weapon in the game except the Master Sword breaks quickly (you get so many, and can stockpile so many, that I never ran out of things to hit people with between the beginning and end of the game simply by exploring, and while I did sometimes wish the game was more forgiving about repairing broken weapons, it made the gameplay challenging in a fair, interesting way). It combines many disparate elements from past games (the sprinting, jumping, and platforming is from Skyward Sword; the ability to use enemy weapons is from Wind Waker; the truly open-world, go-wherever-you-please approach, and the old man giving you guidance, is from the original Zelda, and more recently A Link Between Worlds; and the horse-riding is most similar to Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess). It also improves on each of these things. It takes some inspiration from other big adventure games, like The Elder Scrolls and Fable, but maintains (and even improves upon) the simple love of exploration Zelda games of the past have often engendered, which can sometimes get drowned in dialogue-heavy narrative. It has a great video game story, which is to say it's more compelling because it says little. Honestly, if I were to recommend any one video game, of any kind, to anyone, it would be this game. Playing it absolutely blew me away, and while I'm a huge nerd playing through the whole darn Zelda series right now (I'm working on The Minish Cap, which so far has been a lot more fun to replay than Skyward Sword), I'm certain I'll love playing through it a second time.

None of that matters, however, if you look at Breath of the Wild and see a game that's way too complicated for you to understand. What you need to recognize is that video games got to where they are now–controlling your character with one control stick, controlling the camera with another, controlling camera lock-ons and weapons that shoot people with trigger buttons, and controlling jumping, talking to other characters, and weapons that slice people with the buttons on the face of the controller–through a ton of trial and error over several decades of development. The jump to 3D environments made games significantly more complicated.

Therefore, my proposition to people who are interested in getting into more complex games but feel a bit overwhelmed by them is to play them after playing an older or more traditional game in the series. Breath of the Wild is a hardcore game, both in how it controls and how difficult it is. A better starting place, therefore, is one of these three titles: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, The Minish Cap, or A Link Between Worlds (A Link to the Past, a great classic game but probably the hardest of the three, is an $8 download for the Wii U or 3DS; Minish Cap is $8 for Wii U, and probably the best if you own a Wii U but not a 3DS; and A Link Between Worlds, which is maybe the best option because it's the newest, is $40 on 3DS).

I mention these because they're all two-dimensional games, meaning the camera is always fixed overhead rather than being manipulated by the player, taking half the difficulty away right off the bat. Additionally, they all have reasonably steady learning curves, teaching the player how to play while they play. Lastly, they are all super fun!

From there, I would probably advise trying Ocarina of Time in its 3DS remake incarnation, or Wind Waker or Twilight Princess in their Wii U incarnations, because all three are easier games (they get tough toward the end, but have very gentle learning curves). From there, you'd probably be ready to play Breath of the Wild–and appreciate it more because you've seen a bit of what came before it.

Why am I even writing this? I suppose because I had an amazing experience with Breath of the Wild, the sort of experience people love to tell other people about (like when you saw The Dark Knight or the last season of Breaking Bad). But I recognize that to appreciate the game the same way I do, it is probably advisable to get a feel for Zelda as a series and get your feet wet in video games. Many people who will enjoy, or already have enjoyed, Breath of the Wild already have this experience, of course. But that feeling of sheer, unlimited, open adventure and exploration and fun that this game brings... I would encourage anyone interested to give it a try.

It’s easy to look at the entertainment industry and say that what it produces is pointless or stupid (“entertainment industry” here meaning creative content such as books, music, movies, TV shows, paintings, video games, musicals, plays, and so forth; we tend to draw some arbitrary line in our minds between what we deem to be junky and useless, which falls under some less-impressive name like “entertainment,” while the stuff we value is deemed “art,” but we’ll mash it all together and call it entertainment for now). I have no hesitation with remarking on my disdain for reality TV, professional sports, Call of Duty, most pop music, most comedy movies, and anything made by Michael Bay or Stephenie Meyer.

Of course, we all have tastes such as these, and a lot of people like the things I just mentioned, even if only in a guilty pleasure kind of way. My tastes, fortunately, have broadened over time; as a kid, I tended to only consume entertainment through any medium if it was a fantasy story. I loved Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings, which meant that I thought books and movies were valuable entertainment mediums while TV was not. I loved The Legend of Zelda, so I thought adventure games, especially as made by Nintendo, were the only ones that were really fun or worth playing.

Since then, I’ve reassessed some things. I love Silicon Valley, Breaking Bad, and Better Call Saul, for example, which made me value TV shows, and I don’t like fantasy just because it’s fantasy so much anymore (I don’t like Game of Thrones much, for example; to me, good stories are about compelling characters, and I can’t get too attached to characters who keep dying, plus I wanted to read the books first and that’s no longer an option).

But when you add it all up, fantasy is still my go-to genre. I loved Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. I enjoyed The Hobbit movies, although they fell short of Lord of the Rings (but then again, the book does, too). I am slowly drawing near to the end of The Wheel of Time, which is a pretty good book series if you have a few years to kill reading all fourteen massive volumes, and then will be moving on to more of Brandon Sanderson and Stephen King’s excellent writing (I’m super stoked for The Dark Tower!).

Last but not least, I’ve fallen back in love with Zelda on 3DS and Wii U (I got rid of all my video games thinking I needed to grow up, and then recognized that it’s dumb to throw things away that bring you joy unless those things are addictive substances). I’m playing Breath of the Wild on Wii U, and I’m sure I’ll get a Nintendo Switch someday, but for now I’m loving being lost in Hyrule on the consoles I have, which, wonderfully for me, can play the whole library of past single-player Zelda games in addition to the new ones.

Something that Breath of the Wild brought to my attention, though, is why fantasy is my genre. Early in the game, Link gets a Sheikah Slate, which is basically a smartphone with an interactive map of Hyrule and a camera. While it’s dead useful in the game and largely unobtrusive, I don’t really like that Link has a smartphone- he didn’t need one to seal Ganon in the Sacred Realm in Ocarina of Time, now did he?

The reason fantasy stories are so great for me- be they novels, movie series, or video games- is that they take me away from the modern world, entirely. They encapsulate me in magic spells, fictional worlds, things that can’t be real, a completely different universe. Others likely look for media that’s intentionally familiar to them, and as I said before, I’ve enjoyed media that can theoretically happen, like Breaking Bad, in more recent years. But for me, fantasy is pure escapism, and that’s a good thing. It works a lot better when the fantasy characters don’t have smartphones.

Perhaps it’s my method of distracting myself from things that are stressing me out. I don’t drink, smoke, or do drugs, so maybe it’s an alternative way for me to cope when I’m in a bad mood, and I suppose fantasy media is better than a drug addiction.

But I guess this is why I had a hard time writing fantasy novels when I was trying for so many years. I couldn’t figure out what was appealing about them to me, and now that I do realize what the appeal was, I suppose I would rather build something that can help people fix their problems than distract them from those problems, although that’s sometimes an admirable thing to do.

This is probably a description of storytelling- “distracting people from their problems”- that undervalues storytelling. Stories have great value in their ability to connect us. They allow us to feel how others feel, so we can empathize. They are the best way for us to learn- put a story behind a bunch of numbers and they become far more interesting than the numbers can ever be on their own.

Nonetheless, if I want to do something with my career, I want to clearly be able to convey why. It’s not enough for me to say that I do something “because I can’t not do it.” I need more clarity, more coherence. But storytelling, if it’s going to be a part of my life, needs to be more than just a story for the sake of a story. It needs to make people reflect and think about themselves and the world around them. It needs to do more, which is why I am slowly beginning to come to the conclusion that I want to combine the art of storytelling with software development, somehow. I feel that that can elevate both the software and the story.

I thought about writing the obligatory “New Year, New You” blog post to kick off 2017. I didn’t, which is why I’m not posting this on January 1st. I thought I’d try and phrase it in such a way that would encourage you, Dear Reader, to take any New Year’s Resolutions you may have made more seriously than most people take their resolutions.

For as we all know, 2016 left many folks feeling broken and disheartened. A lot of famous people died. Brexit happened. The United States elected Donald Trump to succeed Barack Obama as the President of the United States, and no matter how you feel about that, there’s no denying that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton’s election campaigns were vicious, divisive, and cruel to the opposing side. The idea that we can all turn over a new leaf in 2017- that perhaps we can all be better versions of ourselves by year’s end- is a positive one, and I’m all for positivity to balance out the constant stream of cynicism that seems to pour from every orifice of our environment these days.

But here’s something we all need to recognize about how the media (social and otherwise) framed 2016: just because some bad things happened around you in 2016, doesn’t mean you were required to have a bad 2016, too. The media, your friends, and even your environment should not dictate how your year went (I recognize that there are external forces beyond some folks’ control, and it’s okay to be upset sometimes, but bear with me). As Senator Cory Booker said regarding Donald Trump’s inflammatory remarks on The Daily Show: “Going through life, you can either be a thermometer or a thermostat. A thermometer changes with the temperature around it. As a thermostat, you set the temperature.”

We all need to take that lesson to heart, no matter what political party you endorse or what your background is. Ultimately, when you add up your accomplishments, your money, your relationships, your health, your life as a whole, you need to set the temperature, not let the world around you dictate it.

I’m not a perfect person, or even close to it. I didn’t have a perfect year- I’m sad that Alan Rickman and Carrie Fisher died, and I fell for the election's hatefulness and the media’s overblown stories like everyone else. I, like most Americans, forgot all about the idea of voting for a candidate based on policy proposals and fell into the lazy way of thinking that results in our broken two-party system. I got into arguments about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump's personalities, and I hated myself for it. But it was easy to not think. It was easy to get outraged at whatever nonsense the news was spewing. It was easy to be a thermometer- which is why most people are.

The problem with wasting your energy and outrage on these things is that you cannot control them. Elections, how other people act, or the death of a celebrity you liked are all things beyond your control. Yes you should vote, and yes you should encourage others to be good, wise, and loving people. But what you should be focused on first and foremost, Dear Reader, is you.

This way of thinking will change your life, guaranteed. It did for me. It's why I had a great 2016- it was the best year of my life, in fact- while so many thermometers around me had a horrible 2016. Sure, a few unfortunate things happened in the wider world, as they often do, and I relapsed more than once. But for the most part, 2016 was fantastic for me, and it's because I've learned to be a thermostat.

In 2016, I became a full-time employee at T-Mobile, meaning my income last year was the highest it's ever been. I had a fascinating, eye-opening experience as a Legislative Intern at the Colorado State Senate. I went to Universal Studios. I got into running- not as consistently as I’d like, but more than in the past. I read several books- not as many as I’d like to have read, but a few good ones. I saw a bunch of great movies about superheroes and wizards and space rebels. I permanently broke my addiction to soda and energy drinks. I beat bipolar disorder- I got off my medication last summer for the first time in 9 years, and I feel incredible.

I picked up a new hobby- listening to podcasts- which I enjoy immensely. I paid down over $8,000 in personal debt from credit cards, a financed smartphone, a car loan, and student loans. I’ve made a ton of progress in just 7 months learning to code in Ruby, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS at Bloc, and I've really enjoyed meshing my love of writing together with my newfound passion for coding on this website. I’ve learned a great deal from my Bloc mentors, both about programming and about life.

And best of all, I spent the whole year with the love of my life, who I proposed to in December. She said yes- and no matter what nonsense is being reported on the news right now, I feel like the luckiest guy in the world.

Much of this- I won't say all, but certainly most- stemmed from being a thermostat, not a thermometer. If I had let cynicism bring me down, I never would have insisted on being full time at T-Mobile, I never would have believed I could change my habits, my diet, and my own mind, I never would have signed up for Bloc, and I never would have taken a chance on another relationship after the disasters that came before this one (some of them were doozies, let me tell ya). 2016 helped me recognize that allowing the media to turn you into a thermometer is a recipe for failure, while listening, learning, growing, and focusing can help you become a thermostat. I watched others on social media complain their way through 2016 and do nothing but tread water while my life, if you add it up, is better in just about every measurable way than it was a year ago.

I don't say this to brag- I say this because I used to feel like I had no control over my life, too. I used to be cynical, negative, broke, and surrounded by broken relationships. I was normal.

So my advice for you going into 2017, Dear Reader, is to stop being normal and start being a thermostat.

The first time a teacher ever told me that I stood out among my peers at school, I was not told that I would make a good programmer. I wasn’t even in Math or Science class, the classes most often associated with computers and programming.

Instead, I was in English class. After reading aloud a creative story I had written to the rest of the class, my teacher told me that I would make a good writer. I took the advice to heart—maybe even more than I should have—and was bent on becoming a fantasy novelist for all of my teenage years.

At the time, it seemed like the right course for my life. I loved reading fantasy novels, so much so that my copies of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings would fall apart in my backpack. I read so much that the rules of spelling and grammar were burned into my brain, helping me to win the Spelling Bee in sixth grade.

But I made a mistake in taking the teachers’ advice too literally. I thought one offhand compliment had dictated my destiny, and that since I was good at writing, it was what I should do for the rest of my life. So I kept on writing stories even though they never really fulfilled me, went to college as an undeclared freshman because I was filled with doubt, and hopped between about a dozen different jobs trying to figure out who I was (I’ve been a cashier at Toys R Us, 7-Eleven, and Target; a salesman for Comcast; a taekwondo instructor at ATA Family Martial Arts; a delivery driver at Silver Mine Subs; a grill cook at Qdoba; a dough cook, pizza line cook, and host at Old Chicago; an opinion columnist at The Rocky Mountain Collegian; a sales associate and assistant manager at Simply Mac, the Apple retailer; and a sales associate at T-Mobile during my time in the workforce).

With every passing year, I struggled harder and harder to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. The pieces were all there: my talent in writing was not a sign that I was creative, but instead evidence that I had a mind for rules and structure that others didn’t (given my obsession with organizing books and movies alphabetically and chronologically as a kid, this came as no surprise to anyone who knows me but me). I loved electronics, particularly those made by companies that focused more on quality than quantity, from a young age—first with my Nintendo consoles, then my first Apple product (an iPod Mini), and nowadays my MacBook, iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch. I had known for years that whatever career I might have, I wanted to make a positive impact on the world, and that the intangible impact of entertainment or the minor impact of a job as a sales associate or a waiter would not satisfy me. And after watching my parents struggle with their finances and accruing a mountain of college debt myself upon graduating from Colorado State University with a Communications degree, I knew I would not settle for a job that left me struggling to pay my bills each month.

I wanted a job that combined all of these elements. I considered every path imaginable—and time and again, despite my doubts about the daunting task of learning to be a software engineer, I kept coming back to the world of programming.